Month: September, 2010

& Tom McCarthy, talking with Lee Rourke in the G: ‘The question is: what is culture for? Is it a vanity mirror for liberal society to see itself reflected back in the way it wants to see itself? Or is it something else, something more disruptive? I think culture should disrupt; it should be troublesome. If it’s a mirror, it should be the cracked one that Joyce talks about; or Lewis Carroll’s one that opens up on huge abysses; or the mirror in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée, where you look in to it and you don’t see yourself reflected back, instead you see the void – you see death at work, “like bees in a hive of glass”. Fucking great line.’

Nine in the morning I think, Why is that stub of candle still going? then realise it’s sunshine slanting through the kitchen window into the thin curved half-empty shell, filling it with light. Then I think: Why won’t anyone sell me a pair of midcut Goretex lined boots in men’s size 6 ? (I understand the market logic: I just don’t understand why market logic means I should go without boots in this [a]isle of maximum “choice”.) Speaking of candles curiously lighted from within, if I could do this I wouldn’t do what I do. Jim Perrin’s new book, West, is out, but don’t buy it unless you want to be reminded what it’s like to be human. Remember that ?